Interview by Joy Manning
A CONVERSATION WITH CHLOE N. CLARK, AUTHOR OF EVERY GALAXY A CIRCLE (JackLeg Press)

In the short story collection Every Galaxy a Circle (JackLeg Press), Chloe N. Clark’s characters encounter memory-erasure programs, zombie pandemics, time-travel tourism, and distress beacons singing from the void of space. What draws these uncanny people and settings together is every story’s insistence that the strangest territory we navigate is inside ourselves.

Across twenty-two wry and disorienting stories, Clark moves fluidly between science fiction, horror, and literary realism, but each tale shares clear creative DNA. Vast unknowable forces, dreams, and memories pervade the galaxies of this fictional universe. In our conversation, Clark talks about how she moves between genres, what makes dark themes irresistible, and why her characters so often find that the systems meant to protect them can’t.

Joy Manning: Can you tell me where the title came from? It doesn’t appear in any of the stories.

Chloe N. Clark: I’m working on a novel about the space race, which means I’m often doing a lot of research into space. I was reading something that mentioned that technically every galaxy is circular in nature; even when they’re not circular shaped, they’re still forming some kind of elliptical pattern. I thought that was an interesting phrase. And then it connected with the collection because I was thinking about how each character is kind of contained within their own galaxy of the people who matter to them, the people who are affecting their lives. This idea that we’re all living within our own closed circle of who matters in our life—it felt like it fit.

Joy: It’s obvious you have an obsession with space. Where does that come from?

Chloe: I’ve always really liked space media since I was a child. Space and deep underwater—I think they reflect each other. My favorite movie as a child was Aliens. In more recent years, I find space exploration so fascinating. If I’m reading a science article, it just opens up so many branches in my head. My partner also works in the space industry: he trains astronauts. So I now have somebody I can talk through these ideas with, which is great.

Joy: The collection spans space stations, zombie pandemics, time travel, ghost-filled diners but still somehow feels cohesive. How did you know these stories belonged together? Does Every Galaxy a Circle have an organizing principle?

Chloe: I’m very particular with how I organize collections. I like to think of them almost like movies, where I’m trying to build emotional momentum but also pacing momentum and different acts within the collection. A lot of it is rereading stories that are potentials for the collection and being very physical about it; I’ll print them out or have a bunch of screens up and move stories around so I can see the movement and pacing. A lot of times I’ll realize a story I thought fit doesn’t because it doesn’t move the overarching narrative that’s in my head. And I’m lucky in that I’ll go through periods where I’m writing a lot of similar themes. So I’ll have five stories that deal with memory, and they form some kind of cohesive whole just because I wrote them in a similar mind space.

Joy: Humor and dread sometimes live side by side in this collection, even in the same paragraph. How do you think about that balance?

Chloe: I don’t think it’s as conscious as it probably should be. I come from a long line of people who use dark humor to cope. So it’s always just sort of prevalent. Something’s going bad, how do we make this okay?

Joy: In “Cave Systems of the Midwest,” the narrator says one of the characters “left” instead of the truth, which is that they “disappeared,” because people will probe tragedy but leave heartbreak alone. It’s such a precise observation about how language protects us. How did that find its way into this story?

Chloe: I used to teach rhetoric, so I’m very conscious of the precise ways we use language and how that changes how we’re communicating. But I also think it’s just years of reading news stories or talking to people and the way they describe their lives—what makes me ask a follow-up question or not, how I hear people having a conversation, what draws other people into the question.

Joy: “Leopard Seals” builds dread almost entirely through social cues—the party invitation, the mysterious tenants’ board, the rules that double as warnings. What drew you to an apartment building as a horror setting?

Chloe: I’d been reading a lot about HOAs [Home Owners Associations], and they very much frightened me. I didn’t like the idea of somebody just really mandating everything in your life. So that seed was there. And then, as an introvert and probably somebody who has some level of social anxiety, those kinds of social cues already kind of freak me out and make me anxious. So that combination.

Joy: There’s a recurring dream in that story—something always coming but never arriving—and dreams show up throughout the collection. How do you think about dreams as a narrative device?

Chloe: I remember in creative writing class in undergrad, the teacher was very firm: you can’t have a dream in your story. It was such an all-encompassing rule that obviously I immediately wanted to fight back. Dreams are so important to who we are as humans. We all dream, even if we don’t remember those dreams. They play a really important role in brain health. So I think dreams do serve a purpose in fiction because they’re a way to connect our humanity with the character. I try to keep to real dream logic; I might base a dream in a story off of a dream I’ve had and tweak it so it fits the narrative but still feels like it could be anyone’s dream.

Joy: I noticed a range of points of view and tenses throughout the collection. How do you decide on POV and tense for a given story?

Chloe: My natural instinct is first person. I like reading first-person narratives, so I tend toward that. But sometimes a different voice just feels right. If I’m trying to get more of a folkloric feel, I’d probably go third person, a little more omniscient or removed. If I’m telling something that feels immediate, I might want present tense. 

My writing process is usually that I’m thinking through the story before I write anything. I see it very visually. I always have to have the first image, and with the first image, I usually have a sense of: Is this being viewed through someone’s eyes? Am I writing in first person? Or am I seeing them like I’m watching a movie?

I’ve had pieces where I’ll start in first person and switch to third. But I very rarely switch [from] third to first, for whatever reason. Sometimes switching to third helps me get a little removed from the character, and then I’ll switch back to first using that distance.

Joy: “Variable Stars” has a wild premise—commodified time travel. Where did that idea come from?

Chloe: I’ve always wanted to write a time travel story but never had the right window into it. And then I was having a conversation about how we come up with interesting technology and instead of using it for the public good, it’s almost always immediately turned into: how can we make money off of this? My head just clicked—oh, we had this cool technology that could help people get over a traumatic memory or relive something, give somebody that boost of endorphins. And I thought, how would a business take advantage of that?

Joy: Capitalism.

Chloe: Always capitalism.

Joy: On a related note, several of these stories involve institutionalized responses to extraordinary situations. What interests you about the intersection of bureaucracy and the uncanny?

Chloe: Capitalism is almost always the villain of the story, no matter what it is. We make these hoops or commodify something, and a lot of times it becomes this blanket thing that everyone adopts, like AI. But it’s not necessarily doing any real good—or it’s causing a lot of harm. How do we fight back against that? How do we combat it? Why is it being done? And how can we change it? I think those are driving questions for me and for a lot of humanity at large.

Joy: You move so fluidly between science fiction, horror, magical realism, fairy tale, literary realism. Do you think of yourself as working in a particular genre?

Chloe: I like to think of myself as more of a chameleon, switching between genres. But I do think that thinking about genre can be a useful tool. Like, if you’re writing hard sci-fi and you need to explain something, how do you hit those beats while changing it in a way that fits you? The other thing is, while I like to think of myself as a chameleon, in some sense everything is speculative. Even literary fiction has some level of the speculative. We’re all living uncanny worlds.

Joy: Many of the stories end in a place of ambiguity. They’re not fully resolved, but something has shifted. How do you know when a story is finished?

Chloe: For me, it’s when I reach what I consider a moment of catharsis. It might be that the character has realized something, or it might be that the reader should realize something even if the character hasn’t. It’s usually an emotional shift, and I feel like a lot of it is very intuitive. I know that if I go past this point, I’m going to be explaining things that don’t need to be explained. I lean toward ambiguity because I think so much of life leaves us with questions more than definitive answers. So my instinct is always less explanation, a little more what if.

Joy: The world feels increasingly dystopian and speculative in real life. Do you feel like that reality intersects with your work?

Chloe: One hundred percent. As a person who is at this point an aging millennial, I’ve lived through distinct horrible parts of our history. There are definitely things that stick out to me that influenced my writing. The first ones that come to mind are mass shootings. I remember how shocking Columbine was and how much of the news cycle was devoted to it, and now the prevalence of these events is such that they’re barely a blip on the news. We now better understand systemic violences without actually addressing the issues. But I think if you pay any attention to the world, you’re always going to find things that distress your worldview in some way. That’s definitely something that has always played a part in my writing.

Joy: What are you working on next?

Chloe: I have two main projects. One is a novel—it would be my first—and it’s a speculative look at the space race. It goes from the Apollo era to a future manned Mars mission, so it moves across time. I’ve been working on it for a few years, and I’m getting very close to finishing. So I’m excited. And then I just finished a collection of short stories that are all based around world endings—maybe my most dystopic collection yet.

Every Galaxy a Circle by Chloe N. Clark was published in January 2026 and is available from major booksellers.

Chloe N. Clark is the author of Collective Gravities, Patterns of Orbit, and more. Her most recent collection is Every Galaxy a Circle from JackLeg Press. She is a founding co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph.

Joy Manning is a reviews and interviews editor for Cleaver magazine. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Call Me [Brackets], The First Line, and Foofaraw Anthology and her journalism has appeared in The Washington Post, Prevention, Philadelphia magazine, and elsewhere. She’s been nominated for the James Beard and IACP Awards and anthologized in Best Food Writing. She earned her MA in creative writing from Temple University.